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| on the mountain winter 2013-2014
WENDY CARLSON
interacting — so unlike what I had experienced in public school before. Mr. Freeman’s students were
engaged, just like we were.
Another English Department goal is to bridge literary traditions with the needs of contemporary life using
new ways of communication. “A letter written in the Victorian era may be a beautiful reflection of a time in
history and is worth studying and appreciating, but the style of writing is not relevant for most uses today,”
Freeman states. He points out that our current students’ generation has different and emerging ways of pro-
cessing information and communicating. He notes that methods of communication have changed with new
technology, are often less text-based and more visual and aural, and that a new kind of literacy is emerging in
the digital age.
Alumnus Howard Marks ’76, relays that he was a student who got the message that he couldn’t write,
which technology later helped address. “I had lousy handwriting and spelling. But things changed when I got
out of college and got involved in the computer industry and when word processing came into my life. Now I
could get my thoughts down as fast as I could think them, and then reorganize without having to recreate the
words on paper on a typewriter.”
Marks has now written hundreds of articles and has been the lead author or a significant contributor to
three books on computers and computing. “Technological advances have advantages over the hand-written
papers that I wrote at SKS, and the typewriters and “white-out” that followed.”
Also, in the ’70s, different learning styles were not a common part of the educational vocabulary, although
boarding schools have traditionally addressed individual needs with the extra time and attention that the
setting allows. A standard part of teacher preparation and professional development now includes working
with various learning styles. In addition, SKS’ Learning Center also provides tools for students to organize
and manage their work, while the Mountain Center provides specific support for students with documented
learning differences.
Even with technological tools, Mr. Freeman notes the challenges of teaching high school writing: “High
school writers are often better than the sum of their grammar and technical skills. We must keep in mind that
the teenage brain is not fully formed in the high school years, and that the development of writing, like the
development of thinking skills, will continue after SKS.”
“
As a department, we have to teach in a way that
is aware of this delicate balance between freedom and
structure, creativity and format — giving students
opportunities to learn the rules and to break them,”
Mr. Freeman says, “A student who has wonderful
things to say might never have an outlet or skills to see
his or her ideas come fully to fruition and may, sadly,
come to the false conclusion that he or she simply
cannot write or is not a writer at all, or, conversely, a
student may learn all the right rules of organization,
grammar, usage, etc. and write an extremely well writ-
ten essay that, in fact, says nothing.”
The SKS History Department teaches students
the rules and structure to write research papers, while
encouraging the freedom of independent thinking.
History Chair Jonathan Meisel also speaks about writ-
ing as a tool for developing critical thinking. “Writ-
ing requires students to organize to get their ideas on
paper.” Early in the academic year, an intensive writing
exercise encourages his students to write using brainstorming and creativity. Later, for class research projects,
students must follow specific steps for a paper starting with a broad exploration of a topic. In a process that
narrows the focus, students will develop a thesis for their writing to be discussed one-on-one with Mr. Meisel
before beginning the stages of writing. Meisel’s students then identify source material to set out to prove or
disprove their thesis, and they learn the specific format and requirements for research citations, footnotes and
bibliographies.
Left: History
Department Chair
Jonathan Meisel
speaks about
writing as a tool for
developing critical
thinking, and how to
organize to get ideas
on paper. Opposite
page: The Cavemen
(1959) —
a splinter
group of
The
Quarry —
expressed
opinions on
controversial matters
and delivered
students “behind the
scene” news.
